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5. LXD
LXD (pronounced lex-dee) is the lightervisor, or lightweight container hypervisor. While this claim has been controversial, it has been quite well justified33 based on the original academic paper. It also nicely distinguishes LXD from LXC34.
LXC (lex-see) is a program which creates and administers "containers" on a local system. It also provides an API to allow higher level managers, such as LXD, to administer containers. In a sense, one could compare LXC to QEMU, while comparing LXD to libvirt.
The LXC API deals with a 'container'. The LXD API deals with 'remotes', which serve images and containers. This extends the LXC functionality over the network, and allows concise management of tasks like container migration and container image publishing.
LXD uses LXC under the covers for some container management tasks. However, it keeps its own container configuration information and has its own conventions, so that it is best not to use classic LXC commands by hand with LXD containers. This document will focus on how to configure and administer LXD on Ubuntu systems.